Aeschines of Sphettus

Though Aeschines' dialogues have survived only as fragments and quotations by later writers, he was renowned in antiquity for his accurate portrayal of Socratic conversations.

[3] (Some modern scholars believe that Xenophon's writings are inspired almost entirely by Plato's and/or by the influence of other Socratics such as Antisthenes and Hermogenes.

The Suda, a Byzantine encyclopedia compiled a dozen centuries later, ascribes to Aeschines several other works called "headless" or "Prefaceless" (akephaloi): Phaidon, Polyainos, Drakon, Eryxias, On Excellence, The Erasistratoi, and The Skythikoi.

[7] The 2nd century AD sophist Publius Aelius Aristides quotes from the Alcibiades at length, preserving for us the largest surviving chunk of Aeschines' written work.

[citation needed] Just before World War I, Arthur Hunt recovered from Oxyrhynchus a papyrus (#1608) containing a long, fragmentary passage from this dialogue that had been lost since ancient times.

In the dialogue, Socrates argues, among other things, that women are capable of exactly the same military and political "virtues" as are men, which Socrates proves by referring Callias to the examples of Aspasia herself (who famously advised Pericles), Thargelia of Miletus (a courtesan who supposedly persuaded many Greeks to ally themselves with Xerxes who in turn gave Thargelia part of Thessaly to rule), and the legendary Persian warrior-queen Rhodogyne.

In the dialogue, Socrates criticizes Telauges for his extreme asceticism and Critobulus for his ostentatiousness, apparently in an attempt to argue for a moderate position.

(We gather that the litigation in question was one brought by Aeschines himself against his lender for reasons that are not made clear in Athenaeus' quotation.

[citation needed] From Hegesander of Delphi (2nd century CE)—via Athenaeus—we hear of the scandal that Plato stole away Aeschines' only student Xenocrates.

[16] Charles H. Kahn provides a good, up-to-date account of Aeschines' writings, with many references to current secondary literature on the topic.

[17] Kahn believes that Aeschines' writings, and in general all Socratic dialogues of the time, constitute literature and cannot be an ultimately reliable source of historical information.